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HOMELAND SECURITY

Stop the “Diversity” Visa Lottery, Gateway for Jihadists by Majid Rafizadeh

Among the heaviest users of the US Diversity Visa lottery are people in countries known to have terrorism problems. Entering the Diversity Visa program, Islamists openly felt, was their opportunity to access the US and cause destruction to the country and its people, which they viewed as their enemy.

In this lottery, not just the winner gains access. When a foreign person wins the lottery, the US gives out visas to his or her family as well — no matter where they were born. As a result, the number of people that come into the US thanks to the lottery program is actually much larger than 50,000 a year.

The terrorists, who share the goal of devastating everything we value, do not care about political correctness, or what the true purpose of the lottery might be. They see only the opportunity to take advantage of a hole in our immigration security.

The US immigration system is significantly flawed; it paves the way for terrorists to enter the country. Since 9/11, no serious actions have been taken to address this fundamental problem. Mercifully, President Donald Trump announced yesterday that he wants the Diversity Visa Program terminated.

As the world now knows, on October 31, in a jihadi vehicular attack, a terrorist, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, drove a rented pickup-truck onto a crowded bicycle path in lower Manhattan. He murdered at least eight innocent people — including students, school staff and tourists celebrating a reunion — and wounded eleven people. He celebrated by shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”). After police stopped his rampage by shooting and wounding him, he asked for an ISIS flag to be brought to his hospital room.

While politicians avoid the truth that “lone wolves” among terrorists effectively do not exist and, along with many in the mainstream media, refuse to tackle the underlying cause of this terror act and refrain from fully reporting on terrorism, we all badly need an open discussion about it.

The mainstream media would doubtless prefer to hide from you that Saipov, an Uzbek national, came to the US thanks to Senator Chuck Schumer’s “Diversity Program,” and that there are many flaws in the US immigration system. The Diversity Visa lottery is high among them.

Sayfullo Saipov (left), the Uzbek terrorist who carried out the October 31 attack in Manhattan, moved to the US thanks to the Diversity Visa Program.

The program accepts 50,000 people a year, totally at random. Citizens from some countries that are US-friendly, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, are not even allowed to apply. Other countries, known to be epicenters of jihadists and Islamist ideologies, are permitted to participate. The applicant does not even need to have a high school education. Among the heaviest users of this lottery are people in countries known to have terrorism problems — specifically Middle Eastern, North African and Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.

If you had grown up, as I did, in Syria and Iran, you would have seen Islamists gathering in groups to further their goals. You would also have seen them encouraging and informing their affiliate groups through various means, including social media, to enter the US Diversity Visa program. This, they openly felt, was their opportunity to access the US and cause destruction to the country and its people, which they viewed as their enemy.

Worse in this lottery is, not just the winner gains access. When a foreign person wins the lottery, the US gives out visas to his or her family as well — no matter where they were born. As a result, the number of people that come into the US thanks to the lottery program is actually far larger than 50,000 a year.

America’s Terrorist Lottery Is it time to stop using games of chance to pick future Americans? Matthew Vadum

After a boastful, giddy Muslim jihadist from Central Asia gleefully mowed down eight innocents with a rented truck in a Manhattan park on Tuesday, President Trump called for an end to the “diversity visa lottery” program that brought him to America.

“We’re so politically correct that we’re afraid to do anything” about the Muslim terrorist threat, the president said at a meeting of his cabinet yesterday.

“I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program … Diversity lottery. Sounds nice, it is not nice, it is not good. It hasn’t been good and we have been against it.”

Trump took to social media to fire a broadside at Democrats.

“The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Charles Schumer beauty. I want merit based,” Trump tweeted Wednesday at 7:24 a.m. Six minutes later he followed up with, “We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter).”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York), who co-sponsored legislation establishing the visa lottery when he was a member of the House of Representatives, deflected in a typically whiny response.

“President Trump where is your leadership? The contrast between President Bush’s actions after 9/11 and President Trump’s actions this morning could not be starker,” Schumer said on the floor of the Senate.

The United States has been awarding green cards through random games of chance for 20 years.

Perhaps spinning a roulette wheel for Supreme Court appointments would ease partisan acrimony in Congress. Maybe the craps table is the logical place to find the nation’s next treasury secretary.

It is a fact that the U.S. Department of State has been distributing green cards through visa lotteries since at least 1987. The current Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV) Program, was established by the Immigration Act of 1990, and took full effect in 1995. Like other applicants seeking permanent resident status, a DV applicant must meet national security-related and eligibility criteria to be issued a green card, which entitles the holder to live and work in the U.S. permanently. At a minimum, DV applicants must have a high school education and two years of work experience or work training within the previous five years, and pass an in-person interview.

Like other lawful permanent residents of the U.S., individuals admitted under the DV program are eligible to seek U.S. citizenship after a waiting period. Any permanent resident may voluntarily abandon this sought-after legal status by, for example, remaining outside the U.S. for a prolonged period of time, failing to file income tax returns while living outside the U.S., or declaring oneself a “nonimmigrant” on U.S. tax returns. Permanent resident status can be rescinded if the person concerned is found to have committed fraud in the immigration process or is convicted of a serious crime or crimes.

Up to 50,000 visas are issued under the DV program annually.

According to CNN:

Visas are awarded by random selection in select countries to promote immigration from places that don’t otherwise send many immigrants to the U.S. Roughly 1 million green cards are issued by the U.S. per year. In 2016, 45,664 diversity visas were issued. The vast majority of green cards are based on family connections, and other categories include employment-based visas and refugees or asylees.

One of the chief defenders of the DV program is the Congressional Black Caucus, which favors it because a lot of people come here from sub-Saharan Africa, explained Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. At one time, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) wanted to double the quota for the program to 100,000, he said.

A Bad Deal For the U.S. Generous plea bargain for serious human trafficker bodes poorly for national security. Michael Cutler

The threat of attacks posed by international terrorist organizations requires a multifaceted response that includes US officials working in close coordination with their foreign counterparts to develop strategies and share sources of reliable intelligence. In point of fact, as an INS agent, I frequently worked with law enforcement agencies of other countries to combat transnational crimes, narcotics trafficking and terrorism, and frequently found that our investigations could not have gone forward without the assistance of our allies.

Clearly the administration recognizes the threats to national security and public safety posed by international terrorists. However, a recent ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) news release titled Foreign National Sentenced to 31 Months in Prison for Leadership Role in Human Smuggling Conspiracy left me frustrated and befuddled. The defendant in this case, a Pakistani national by the name of Sharafat Ali Khan, admitted that he smuggled dozens of illegal aliens into the United States, yet was permitted to plead guilty to a single count of alien smuggling.

There is, as you will see shortly, far more to his crimes then simply facilitating the uninspected entry of a significant number of illegal aliens into the United States.

To be fair, most criminal prosecutions are concluded by plea bargains, not by trials. If all cases were resolved by a trial, the judicial system on all levels would collapse in a matter of weeks. Plea bargains are commonplace and are supposed to make sense for all involved.

Sometimes defendants become cooperators who provide vital information against other members of the criminal conspiracies in which they participated so that those above them in the criminal “food chain” can be identified and evidence vital to the successful prosecution of these criminals can be gathered. In such instances the benefits to such plea bargains are generally fairly obvious.

Sometimes prosecutors decide that it is simply easier to offer a plea deal to dispose of a criminal prosecution with the expenditure of minimal resources. Trials are often time and resources consuming, making appropriate plea bargains cost-effective and therefore advantageous. However, there are times when a plea bargain is not a “bargain” for law enforcement nor for the public interest.

Plea bargains are compromises but our national security should never be compromised. Although I am reluctant to second-guess the prosecutors, today I am compelled to disagree with the the plea bargain that will set Khan free in just 31 months.

According to the ICE press release, a plea bargain agreement was reached between federal prosecutors and Khan in which he agreed to plead guilty to a single count of alien smuggling in exchange for a 31-month prison sentence. In reality, he smuggled dozens of illegal aliens into the United States.

Khan’s crimes endangered the lives of the aliens he smuggled, but, first and foremost, his crimes created a significant threat to U.S. national security and public safety. The illegal aliens he smuggled in were citizens of countries that are associated with terrorism, specifically, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. According to evidence and intelligence gathered by a group of U.S. law enforcement agencies including Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the Joint Terrorism Task Force; FBI-Miami; and the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), at least one of the smuggled aliens had a direct nexus to terrorism. That individual was a citizen of Afghanistan who authorities said was involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. or Canada and had family ties to members of the Taliban.

To conduct his scheme, Kahn acquired immigrant status in Brazil, the country through which he smuggled those aliens and in which he created “safe houses” along with additional holding sites in other Latin American countries. Of extreme significance is face that the Tri-Border Region of Brazil is notorious for its terror training camps. This threat is laid out in an important paper, Islamist Terrorist Threat in the Tri-Border Region, that was published by Jeffrey Fields a research associate for the Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Furthermore, as reported by the Washington Times, when Khan stood before the federal judge to plead guilty plea to the single count of alien smuggling, Khan demonstrated the unmitigated chutzpah to ask the judge to grant him political asylum, claiming he was a “poor person.” In asking for political asylum, a request summarily dismissed by the judge, Khan was simply following the same advice he gave to the aliens he smuggled, telling them to claim political asylum if they were caught by the Border Patrol.

Judge Sentences American ISIS Terrorist Captured in Iraq to 20 Years in Prison By Patrick Poole

Mohamad Jamal Khweis of Alexandria, Virginia, an American ISIS terrorist who was captured by the Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq in March 2016, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a federal judge on Friday.

Khweis is the first known American to have actually fought with ISIS to be convicted and sentenced. Others have been charged and remain at large.

After the sentencing, U.S. Attorney Dana Boente described Khweis as “unpredictable and dangerous”:

The evidence at trial demonstrated that Mohamad Khweis is an unpredictable and dangerous person who was radicalized towards violent jihad. This office, along with the National Security Division and our investigative partners, are committed to tracking down anyone who provides or attempts to provide material support to a terrorist organization…

Khweis purposefully traveled overseas with the intent to join ISIS in support of the terrorist group’s efforts to conduct operations and execute attacks to further their radical ideology. Khweis recognized that ISIS uses violence in its expansion of its caliphate and he committed to serving as a suicide bomber.

A federal jury convicted Khweis this past June.

A Justice Department press release says that Khweis knowingly traveled to Syria to join the terror group:

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Khweis left the United States in mid-December 2015, and ultimately crossed into Syria through the Republic of Turkey in late December 2015. Before leaving, Khweis strategically planned his travel. Using a sophisticated scheme of tradecraft, Khweis purposefully traveled to other countries first before entering Turkey to conceal his final destination. During his travel to the Islamic State, he used numerous encrypted devices to conceal his activity, and downloaded several applications on his phone that featured secure messaging or anonymous web browsing. Khweis used these applications to communicate with ISIS facilitators to coordinate and secure his passage to the Islamic State.

After arriving in Syria, Khweis stayed at a safe house with other ISIS recruits in Raqqa and filled out ISIS intake forms, which included his name, age, skills, specialty before jihad and status as a fighter. When Khweis joined ISIS, he agreed to be a suicide bomber. In February 2017, the U.S. military recovered his intake form, along with an ISIS camp roster that included Khweis’ name with 19 other ISIS fighters.

During the trial, the evidence showed that Khweis spent two and a half months as an ISIS member, traveled with ISIS fighters to multiple safe houses, participated in ISIS-directed religious training, attended ISIS lectures, constantly watched military videos with his fellow ISIS members for inspiration, frequently gave money to ISIS members and was forward deployed to Tal Afar, Iraq, before he was captured. Kurdish Peshmerga military forces detained Khweis in March 2016. A Kurdish Peshmerga official testified at trial that he captured Khweis on the battlefield after Khweis left an ISIS-controlled neighborhood in Tal Afar.

On cross-examination, Khweis admitted he consistently lied to United States and Kurdish officials about his involvement with ISIS, and that he omitted telling U.S. officials about another American who had trained with ISIS to conduct an attack in the United States.

Khweis and his family were telling a different story after he was captured in March 2016.

Who Deserves The Drug Cartels’ MVP Award? The growing list of those feeding the opioid crisis. Michael Cutler

There has been a long-standing debate as to whether or not marijuana is a “gateway drug” to hardcore drugs. However, there is no such debate about whether abused prescription opiates are gateway drugs to heroin and fentanyl — they are.

Today America finds itself suffering from the worst heroin epidemic in history.

The unprecedented numbers of Americans who have become addicted to prescription opiates provide the drug cartels with more potential “customers” than ever before and, as I noted in an article awhile back, Obama’s border failures have only made their business easier.

There are other parties who bear blame for the creation of this crisis as well. On Sunday, October 15, 2017 the CBS News program, “60 Minutes” aired an infuriating report, “Ex-DEA agent: Opioid crisis fueled by drug industry and Congress.”

That “ex-DEA agent” is Joe Rannazzisi who headed the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control, the division that regulates and investigates the pharmaceutical industry. According to the 60 Minutes report, “Rannazzisi tells the inside story of how, he says, the opioid crisis was allowed to spread — aided by Congress, lobbyists, and a drug distribution industry that shipped, almost unchecked, hundreds of millions of pills to rogue pharmacies and pain clinics providing the rocket fuel for a crisis that, over the last two decades, has claimed 200,000 lives.”

A subsequent Washington Post editorial detailed how the situation unfolded:

A DEA effort was undertaken in the mid-2000s to target drug distribution companies that were shipping unusually large volumes of opioids. For example, one midsize distributor had shipped 20 million doses to pharmacies in West Virginia over five years; 11 million doses went to one county alone with a population of 25,000 people. Some pharmacies in Florida were nothing more than illicit drug dens, with streams of customers arriving in vans from Appalachia. “Back home, each 30-pill bottle of oxycodone was worth $900,” The Post reports. By going after the distributors, the DEA hoped to stanch this deadly trade. The DEA brought at least 17 enforcement cases against 13 drug distributors and one manufacturer under a hard-charging head of the Office of Diversion Control, Joseph T. Rannazzisi.

Then the rules changed. The DEA originally could freeze drug shipments that posed an “imminent danger” to the community, giving the agency broad authority to act. In 2014, the industry launched an effort to slow enforcement by changing the standard. The legislation was sponsored by Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) and aided by former DEA officials who went through the revolving door to help the drug companies.

The 60 Minutes report and a parallel eye-opening investigative report published by the Washington Post sent shockwaves around the country and resulted in Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Marino issuing a statement requesting that President Trump withdraw his name from consideration to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) as the so-called “Drug Czar.”

Although I was an INS special agent, I had a front row seat to America’s purported “War on Drugs.” In 1988 I became the first INS special agent to be assigned to DEA’s Unified Intelligence Division (UID) in New York City. In 1991 I was promoted to the position of Senior Special Agent and assigned to the Organized Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) where I remained for the balance of my career, working with the DEA, FBI and other federal and local law enforcement agencies and the law enforcement agencies of other governments.

I did not generally participate in DEA investigations into so-called “diversion” cases because those investigations rarely involved foreign nationals. However, what the excellent 60 Minutes report did not discuss was how, all too often, hapless patients who became hooked on prescription opiates were either unable to get more prescriptions for those drugs or were unable to continue to pay for those expensive drugs and, consequently, some of these desperate addicts have resorted to committing violent robberies at local pharmacies. Others resorted to cheaper street drugs such as heroin.

Somali Who Executed Canadian Terror Attack Entered U.S. Via Mexico see note pleas

Janet Levy wrote about the porous border for narco terrorists in February 2017: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/02/narcoterrorism_on_the_usmexico_border.html

Somali Who Executed Canadian Terror Attack Entered U.S. Via Mexico

The Somali terrorist who stabbed a Canadian police officer and ran over four pedestrians a few weeks ago entered the United States through the Mexican border and was released by Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), allowing him to continue his journey north. The ISIS operative, Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, was ordered deported, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokeswoman told various media outlets recently, but was released on an “order of supervision” and the feds never saw him again.

Sharif entered the U.S. in 2011 through the San Ysidro port of entry in California without documentation and was briefly held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, a local newspaper reported. A year later he crossed the border into Canada and settled in Edmonton after being granted refugee status. On September 30 he slammed into an Edmonton police officer with his car then got out of the vehicle and repeatedly stabbed the cop with a knife. After fleeing the scene, Sharif stole a truck and deliberately mowed down four pedestrians. Canadian authorities found an ISIS flag in his car and have charged him with multiple counts of attempted murder, criminal flight causing bodily harm and possession of a weapon. Two years ago, Canadian authorities investigated the 30-year-old terrorist for espousing extremist views. It’s disturbing that Sharif’s northbound trek took him through the U.S.-Mexico border.

As part of an ongoing investigation into cartels, corruption and terrorism, Judicial Watch has for years reported that Islamic extremists are entering the country through Mexico and that ISIS is operating in border towns just miles from American cities. Judicial Watch launched the project in 2014 by exposing a sophisticated narco-terror ring with strong ties to ISIS and connections running from El Paso to Chicago to New York City. Two of the FBI’s most wanted were embroiled in the operation that also had deep ties to Mexico. Less than a year later, Judicial Watch reported that ISIS is operating in a Mexican border town just eight miles from El Paso, the result of Islamic terrorists joining forces with drug cartels and human smugglers knowns as “coyotes.”

When Judicial Watch reported that Mexican cartels were smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town, federal authorities publicly denied the story was true. Never the less, high-level sources on both sides of the border confirmed to Judicial Watch that foreigners, classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA), were being transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs waited for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20. At the time a Texas Department of Public Safety report leaked by the media had already confirmed that for years members of known Islamist terrorist organizations had been apprehended crossing the southern border.

Last year a high-ranking DHS official told Judicial Watch that Mexican drug traffickers help Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the United States to explore targets for future attacks. Among the jihadists that travel back and forth through the porous southern border is a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen and has lived in Mexico for more than a year, according to information provided by Judicial Watch’s government source. Now Khabir trains thousands of men—mostly Syrians and Yemenis—to fight in an ISIS base situated in the Mexico-U.S. border region near Ciudad Juárez, the intelligence gathered by Judicial Watch’s source reveals. Staking out U.S. targets is not difficult and Khabir actually bragged in an Italian newspaper article that the border region is so open that he “could get in with a handful of men, and kill thousands of people in Texas or in Arizona in the space of a few hours.” In the same article Mexico’s top diplomat, Foreign Affairs Secretary Claudia Ruiz, said “this new wave of fundamentalism could have nasty surprises in store for the United States.”

While much of the American mainstream media ignores that Sharif made it to Canada via the U.S.-Mexico border, it’s hardly surprising considering Islamic extremists have been infiltrating the country through the famously unprotected region for years. Referring to the recent Canadian attack, a think-tank dedicated to investigating the operations, funding, activities and front groups of Islamic extremists worldwide writes: “Fears about a terrorist using the U.S.-Mexican border as a gateway for an attack have been realized.”

Imran Awan Made “Massive” Data Transfers What did Democrats know and when did they know it? Lloyd Billingsley

Imran Awan was the preferred IT man for former DNC boss Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other prominent Democrats. When Awan attempted to flee the country in July, authorities busted him for bank fraud, but for Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel-Rahman, “this appears to be a real conspiracy, aimed at undermining American national security.” Now some in Congress agree.

On Tuesday, Fox News reported, Rep. Scott Perry said Awan had made “massive” data transfers that posed a “substantial security threat.” Awan and four of his associates made 5,400 unauthorized logins on a single government server that belonged to Xavier Becerra, then head of House Democratic Caucus and now attorney general of California.

On October 6, Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller reported that Awan’s attorney wants to bar authorities from recovering data off the hard drive from a laptop with the username “RepDWS.” Capitol police found that laptop in a phone booth in the Rayburn House Office Building after Imran Awan had been banned from the House network from which he made massive data transfers.

Xavier Becerra was one of five House Democratic Caucus members who hired Imran Awan in 2004 but Becerra made more payments to Awan than any other Caucus member. Awan had access to data from 45 House Democrats including members of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees. To access that kind of information requires a security clearance, and as Andrew McCarthy noted, Awan and his crew could not possibly have qualified for such a clearance.

Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman granted Awan free access to her computer and also brought aboard Abid Awan’s wife Natalia Sova and Awan’s brother Jamal. Wasserman Schultz refused to fire Awan even after he became the target of a criminal investigation, and she threatened investigators when they sought to inspect a laptop that belonged to the intrusive IT man.

In August, Wasserman Schultz told the Sun-Sentinel she was concerned that Awan’s

due process rights were “being violated,” that the Muslim was “put under scrutiny because of his religious faith,” and that “the right-wing media circus fringe” was jumping to “outrageous, egregious conclusions that they have ties to terrorists and that they were stealing data.” Wasserman Schultz also said it was absurd to conclude that Awan was trying to flee the country.

As Luke Rosiak noted, when Imran Awan tried to board a flight to Pakistan in July he was carrying documents with an alias in the Jackson Heights, Queens neighborhood of New York City, and possibly planning to relocate there under a different identity. According to prosecutors, Awan was taking “active measures” to hide evidence, such as wiping clean his cell phone.

Awan’s attorney Chris Gowen is a former aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Gowen described Awan’s arrest as “clearly a right-wing media-driven prosecution by a United States Attorney’s Office that wants to prosecute people for working while Muslim.”

Some three months later, Rep. Scott Perry announced a “substantial security threat” from “massive” data breaches by the Democrats’ favorite IT man. Of all the IT men in all the IT companies in all the world, why did the Democrats hire Imran Awan? After learning that the Pakistani-born Muslim was under investigation, why did the Democrats keep paying him? And why did they bring on board other members of his family?

THE GLAZOV GANG WARNER MOMENT: THE NEAR ENEMY VIDEOS

This special edition of the Glazov Gang presents the Dr. Bill Warner Moment with Dr. Bill Warner, the president of politicalislam.com.http://jamieglazov.com/2017/10/09/warner-moment-the-near-enemy/

Bill focused on The Near Enemy, analyzing the urgency of opening of a new front in a civilizational war.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Dr. Warner focus on How to Use the Elements of Islam to Vet Muslim Migrants, where he asks: Is the Koran wrong or right about wife-beating, sexual slavery, killing unbelievers and political assassinations?

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Kirstjen Nielsen, White House Aide, Is Picked to Run Homeland Security By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Wednesday that he intended to name Kirstjen Nielsen, a top White House aide, to lead the Department of Homeland Security, elevating a former homeland security official in the George W. Bush administration who has lately worked to impose order in Mr. Trump’s chaotic West Wing.

Mr. Trump announced his choice in a statement that noted Ms. Nielsen’s “extensive professional experience in the areas of homeland security policy and strategy, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure and emergency management.” She is the first nominee for the homeland security post who had served in the department, according to the statement.

If confirmed, Ms. Nielsen would replace John F. Kelly, who was homeland security secretary until he left in July to serve as the White House chief of staff and bring discipline and direction to a West Wing plagued by disorganization and infighting. Mr. Kelly had drafted Ms. Nielsen to be his chief of staff at the Homeland Security department, and when the president plucked him for the White House, he brought her as his No. 2.

Known as a no-nonsense player and policy wonk, Ms. Nielsen appears unlikely to land at the center of the type of controversies that have engulfed Mr. Trump’s presidency. But her regimented style in a freewheeling and often dysfunctional West Wing frustrated some senior officials and people close to the president, who chafed under her dictates. On Wednesday, some of them described Ms. Nielsen’s promotion as a solution to a toxic personnel situation, while others fretted privately that her departure would create a void at the White House that would be difficult to fill.

Mr. Kelly pushed hard for her selection, making a personal appeal to Mr. Trump during a monthslong search process. Among the other candidates considered, according to people familiar with the process, was Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Former colleagues said on Wednesday that Ms. Nielsen was well qualified.

“She’s a total homeland security expert — absolutely has no learning curve,” said Michael Allen, who worked with Ms. Nielsen during the Bush administration. “She’s an experienced manager, she’s an implementer, she knows how to get under the hood and figure out what needs to be connected to what.”

Added Frances Townsend, her boss at the White House during the Bush administration: “She is tough as nails, competent and has rightly earned the president’s respect.”

ISIS in Ohio (Part One): The Terror Attack at Ohio State University By Patrick Poole

Ohio State students returning from their Thanksgiving break last November had their first day back on campus shattered by one of their fellow students, Abdul Razak Ali Artan. He drove his brother’s grey Honda Civic into a crowd gathered outside Watts Hall on campus, injuring a number of them. He then emerged from the wrecked vehicle with an eight-inch knife and began attacking bystanders, some of whom were already tending to the injured.

The Islamic State would hail Artan the very next day, calling him a “soldier” and praising him for responding to their call for Muslims living in the West to conduct terror attacks in its name.

Artan, however, isn’t the only Islamic State “soldier” from Ohio to answer the terror group’s call.

In fact, a growing number of ISIS supporters and operatives have emerged from the Buckeye State over the past two years. The ISIS-inspired terror attack at Ohio State on November 28, 2016, should have been a wake-up call to the escalating problem in the state, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Rather, the terror incident is yet another example of how the problem has been buried while the threat has metastasized.

Buckeye Battle Cry: “Run, Hide, Fight”

The pageantry of a football game at Ohio Stadium is among the top spectacles in American college athletics, with 100,000-plus fans (usually) cheering their team on to victory. The bells ringing after a score. The “Skull Session” with the football team and the marching band prior to the game. And the band’s entry into the stadium at the beginning of the game, leading the crowd with Ohio State’s fight song, “Buckeye Battle Cry.”

But after Abdul Razak Artan’s terror attack last year, Ohio State has a new fight song, as do hundreds of other college campuses: “Run, Hide, Fight.”

Artan’s victims didn’t have much time to run and hide when his car jumped the curb and rammed into a crowd of students. Eleven people were injured, most by the car-ramming; two were slashed by Artan with his knife. One victim had a fractured skull. Artan was shot and killed by a campus police officer two minutes after the attack began.

It was the first semester for the Logistics Management third-year student at Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business, having graduated cum laude in May 2016 with an associate’s degree from Columbus State Community College.

On his first day on campus, Artan was interviewed by the Ohio State student newspaper, The Lantern. He whined to the reporter about the absence of places for Muslims to pray on campus (there is a dedicated room at the student union) and about misconceptions other students might have about him and Islam if he prayed in public. The reporter later related how quickly Artan was able to recite from memory the laundry list of Islamic grievances, and his perception that Muslims were under siege in America from pervasive Islamophobia.

Among the courses he was taking that first semester was a class on “microaggressions” called “Crossing Identity Borders,” where students are encouraged to “identify ways in which they can challenge or address systems of power and privilege.”

One might say that given Artan’s background, he had already been the beneficiary of privilege.

Born and raised in Somalia, he and his family lived as refugees in Pakistan from 2007 until 2014, at which time they moved to the U.S. and received legal permanent resident status. Among the stated reasons for his family moving to America was his mother’s concern that she didn’t want Abdul Razak and his siblings being recruited by the Somali terror group Al-Shabaab.

First landing in Dallas for a few weeks, they were resettled in Columbus — home of the second largest Somali community in the country. He apparently quickly enrolled at Columbus State, which has one of the largest Muslim student populations of any higher education institution in America.

Artan’s friends in Ohio and Pakistan claimed that he “loved America,” but that contrasts dramatically with the Facebook post he left just three minutes before his attack: CONTINUE AT SITE